Contents

An 8-year-old boy named Bruno (Asa Butterfield) lives with his family in Berlin, in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. He learns that his father Ralf (David Thewlis) has been promoted, due to which their family, including Bruno's mother Elsa (Vera Farmiga) and 12-year-old sister Gretel (Amber Beattie), relocate to the countryside. Bruno hates his new home as there is no one to play with and very little to explore. After commenting that he has spotted people working on what he thinks is a farm in the distance, he is also forbidden from playing in the back garden.

One day, Bruno disobeys his parents and sneaks off into the woods, eventually arriving at an electric barbed wire fence surrounding a camp. He befriends a boy his own age named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon). The pair's lack of knowledge on the true nature of the camp is revealed: Bruno thinks that the striped uniforms that Shmuel, Pavel, and the other prisoners wear are pyjamas and Shmuel believes his grandparents died from an illness during their journey to the camp. Bruno starts meeting Shmuel regularly, sneaking him food and playing board games with him. He eventually learns that Shmuel is a Jew and was brought to the camp with his father.

One day, Elsa discovers the reality of Ralf's assignment after Lieutenant Kurt Kotler (Rupert Friend) lets slip that the black smoke coming from the camp's chimneys is due to the burning corpses of Jews. She confronts Ralf, disgusted and heartbroken. At dinner that night, Kotler admits that his father had left his family and moved to Switzerland. Upon hearing this, Ralf tells Kotler he should have informed the authorities of his father's disagreement with the current political regime as it was his duty. The embarrassed Kotler then uses Pavel's spilling of a wine glass as an excuse to beat the inmate to prove his support of the regime. The next morning the maid, Maria, is seen scrubbing the blood stains.

Later the next day, Bruno sees Shmuel working in his home. Shmuel is there to clean wine glasses because they needed someone with small hands to do it. Bruno offers him some cake and willingly Shmuel accepts it. Unfortunately, Kotler happens to walk into the room where Bruno and Shmuel are socializing. Kotler is furious and yells at Shmuel for talking to Bruno. In the midst of his scolding, Kotler notices Shmuel chewing the food Bruno gave him. When Kotler asks Shmuel where he got the food, he says Bruno offered the cake, but Bruno, fearful of Kotler, denies this. Believing Bruno, Kotler tells Shmuel that they will have a "little chat" later. Distraught, Bruno goes to apologize to Shmuel, but finds him gone. Every day, Bruno returns to the same spot by the camp but does not see Shmuel. Eventually, Shmuel reappears behind the fence, sporting a black eye. Bruno apologizes and Shmuel forgives him, renewing the friendship.

After the funeral of his mother, who was killed in Berlin by an enemy bombing, Ralf tells Bruno and Gretel that their mother suggests that they go live with a relative because it isn't safe there. Their mother suggests this because she doesn't want her children living with their murderous father. Shmuel has problems of his own; his father has gone missing after those with whom he participated in a march did not return to the camp. Bruno decides to redeem himself by helping Shmuel find his father. The next day, Bruno, who is due to leave that afternoon, dons a striped prisoners' outfit and a cap to cover his unshaven hair, and digs under the fence to join Shmuel in the search. Bruno soon discovers the true nature of the camp after seeing the many sick and weak-looking Jews. While searching, the boys are taken on a march with other inmates by Sonderkommandos.

At the house, Gretel and Elsa discover Bruno's disappearance, and Elsa bursts into Ralf's meeting to alert him that Bruno is missing. Ralf and his men mount a search and find Bruno's discarded clothing outside the fence. They enter the camp, looking for him; Bruno, Shmuel and the other inmates are stopped inside a changing room and are told to remove their clothes for a "shower". They are packed into a gas chamber, where Bruno and Shmuel hold each other's hands. An SS soldier pours some Zyklon B pellets inside, and the prisoners start yelling and banging on the metal door. When Ralf realizes that a gassing is taking place, he cries out his son's name, and Elsa and Gretel fall to their knees in despair. The film ends by showing the closed door of the now-silent gas chamber, indicating that the prisoners, Shmuel and Bruno, are dead.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has a 63% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 134 reviews, with a 6.2/10 average rating.[4] On Metacritic, the film was given 55 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[5]

James Christopher, of The Times, referred to the film as "a hugely affecting film. Important, too."[6]Manohla Dargis, of The New York Times, however, gave a negative review saying the film "trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked [the Holocaust] for a tragedy about a Nazi family."[7]

Some critics have criticized the premise of the book and subsequent film. Reviewing the original book, RabbiBenjamin Blech wrote: "Note to the reader: There were no 9-year-old Jewish boys in Auschwitz – the Nazis immediately gassed those not old enough to work."[8] Rabbi Blech affirmed the opinion of a Holocaust survivor friend that the book is "not just a lie and not just a fairytale, but a profanation." Blech acknowledges the objection that a "fable" need not be factually accurate; he counters that the book trivializes the conditions in and around the death camps and perpetuates the "myth that those [...] not directly involved can claim innocence," and thus undermines its moral authority. Students who read it, he warns, may believe the camps "weren't that bad" if a boy could conduct a clandestine friendship with a Jewish captive of the same age, unaware of "the constant presence of death."[9]

But, according to the memoirs of several Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors, a few young children did live in the camp: "The oldest children were 16, and 52 were less than 8 years of age. Some children were employed as camp messengers and were treated as a kind of curiosity, while every day an enormous number of children of all ages were killed in the gas chambers."[10][11][improper synthesis?]

Kathryn Hughes, whilst agreeing about the implausibility of the plot, argues that "Bruno's innocence comes to stand for the willful refusal of all adult Germans to see what was going on under their noses."[12] In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert says the film is not a reconstruction of Germany during the war, but is "about a value system that survives like a virus."[13]